Real Weddings

Taylor Tomasi & Johnathan “Chase” Hill

Text by Allison Hatfield

A decade in New York City can change a person. People grow; preferences shift. And when fashion is your line of work, the evolution can be magnified. Which is why when Taylor Tomasi began planning her wedding, she ran into some challenges. What plays in Dallas wasn’t necessarily going to win her vote.

Piles of crystals, a forest of flowers, showy decor in every inch of a room—none of it appealed to the Teen Vogue accessories director. “My whole outlook on design is ‘keep it simple,’” she explains. “Dallas tends to be ‘bigger is better,’ but we didn’t want that. My aesthetics have changed so much since I left, and I wanted to make sure that really came through.”
But first came love.

For Taylor and her now husband, Johnathan “Chase” Hill, the road to the altar began in 1993, when both were attending Highland Park High School and were far too young to be called a couple. She had just finished eighth grade; he was a grade ahead. They didn’t start dating until Chase was a senior bound for New York City. Taylor followed him to the Pratt Institute, where they both got a degree in industrial design. It would be nearly 10 years from that point before Chase would ask Taylor to marry him: he pulled out a ring while they were in a taxi crossing the Williamsburg Bridge to their home in Manhattan.

Then came marriage.

Taylor worked with Todd Event Design to get the look she wanted. Initial ideas were rejected. “They wanted to go with ‘A Perfect Pair’ and put a pear on everybody’s plate. They wanted to hang chandeliers in the trees—and that’s so not us,” she says. Eventually, however, the design team pulled back enough to suit Taylor’s tastes.

“We went with a Gatsby theme—very 1920s, very sweet, nothing overdone or over the top, not too fussy but very romantic,” Taylor says. “We tried to make it really us.”

And it was simply beautiful.

The event took place on May 17, 2008, beginning at 6 in the evening. After the ceremony at Highland Park Presbyterian Church, the celebration moved to the Nasher Sculpture Center garden, where two long tables were set up on the lawn. Little round white lights strung tree to tree created a glowy atmosphere and a soft mood (tip of the hat to Chase, who worked at the time as a lighting designer). Small arrangements of pink and white ranunculus and peonies ran down the middle of the tables. The food was as understated as the rest of the affair—Wolfgang Puck-created Caprese salad and steak. Plus a gorgeous cake by Le Gateau.
Guests danced well into the night. A DJ friend flown in from New York made sure of that. And when it came time to say goodnight, Taylor and Chase departed in a vintage taxi on loan from a McKinney man, neither gold-hatted nor high-bouncing but lovers all the same.